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Tool Use By Humans Pushed Back By 800,000 Years
gpronger writes "The journal Nature reports that newly discovered tool marks on bones indicates that we were using tools at minimum 800,000 years earlier than previously thought. This places the start of tool use at 3.4 million years ago or earlier. The most likely ancestor in this time frame would be Australopithecus afarensis. The researchers, led by palaeoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Science, San Francisco,and Shannon McPherron, (an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany) state that cut marks on the bones of an impala-sized creature and another closer in size to a buffalo, indicate butchering of the animals by our distant ancestors. However, they do not believe that they were in fact hunters, more likely scavenging the remains left behind by large predators."
Oh, wait... wrong Tool.
(I hate babysitting databases... makes the brain go all squiggly at 2 in the morning. At least now I can stop wondering if they found a fossilized CD player next to the bones...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
How many early humans were tools ...
Less than the number of internet users who are tools. /s
...then we've been using tool even before earth, the sky and whatnot were created! What a mind blowing revelation.
Nearly three and a half million years of humans using tools, and I can't even put up a shelf. If you want evidence that evolution isn't all it's cracked up to be, there it is.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
With luck, another 800 000 years.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Is that supposed to be our car analogy for this article?
Tool use by humans pushed back again, and by 800,000 years? I can't wait that long. I have to fix my brakes this weekend.
More music, fewer hits
> The first person to think of trimming a sharp rock for better performance was a genuine innovator.
If only they'd patented it!
The first person to think of trimming a sharp rock for better performance was a genuine innovator.
Sadly, the word innovation and all the derivative vocabulary that comes with it due to overuse in the latest marketing fodder triggered an image of a caveman named Zog making a sharper rock. When he had finally created this technological marvel the word quickly spread in the local tribal community. The tribe would go out hunting, and those whose rocks didn't meet required sharpness criteria would be considered to be fools clinging to obsolete technology. In a matter of days, Zog had ascended from lowly rockbasher to an expert in the field of innovative hunting.
Zog had it all: finely cut food from the most tasty animals the local wildlife had to offer, the adoration of the masses, commanding power over the world because of his fearsomely sharp weaponry, and a veritable harem of alluring females. A few weeks after his rise to power though, things weren't looking so great anymore for Zog. Nerg, the foul smelling tribal lunatic, had taken his innovative rocksharpening technique and had improved the process by a factor of 2 by means of sustained repetitive bashing. No longer did Zog have the sharpest rocks in the tribe, and almost instantaneously he lost it all. The masses no longer adored him for they were too busy hunting with Nerg. His power over the world stagnated and eventually had to make way for the sharper weaponry of Nerg. But most important of all, his considerably sized harem of willing females left him for the newer more powerful rocksharpener.
And that is how the Tribal Patent Orgnanization was formed. Scratched into a cavewall for all eternity we find the worlds first patent: "TPO Issued Patent #00000001 : A technique for sharpening rocks by bashing rocks against eachother.". It includes various drawings on rock sharpening techniques and a vague description of acquiring a harem by the use of these techniques. Unfortunately Zog never got to sue Nerg in a tribal court of law, because Nerg bashed in his skull with an incredibly sharp rock several minutes after filing the patent.
To this day, Nerg is remembered as the worlds first innovator and harem owner.
True story!
(I apologize for the precious time I stole from you to read this, but the code I'm writing right now is slowly killing my brain unless I entertain it a little in small doses. Tune in next comment, when Dorg invents fire and accidentally burns down his cave, and is remembered throughout history as the worlds smartest and most stupid caveman of all time. Don't miss out on how Dorg later also invents insurance fraud.)
alleged insurance fraud. It hasn't been proven yet.
rewriting history since 2109
This brings to mind the paradox of Thag, who patented a "process of using persistent symbolic forms for the purpose of communicating ideas". Mind you, Thag's patent was TPO issued patent #00000004, and it wasn't long, thereafter, that Nerg brought Thag before the tribal council to complain the impossibility of this. Since Nerg's previous patent was inscribed in a manner as described by Thag's patent, it became readily apparent to the council that Thag was either a patent troll, or that Nerg was guilty of IP infringement.
Ordinarily, Nerg would've just bashed in Thag's skull, but in this case, Thag just happened to a full head and shoulders taller than Nerg, and was renowned for his prowess in wrestling cave bears for the entertainment of the tribe. (Well, you can't make cave paintings without dealing with the cave bears, first, you know!) That, and Thag's brother, "Cannibal" Uchuk, just happened to have mentioned to Nerg that if anything happened to Thag, it would likely cost Nerg an arm and a leg to resolve the matter. It was thus that the world's first Patent dispute occurred.
Uchuk later went on to a successful career as a patent lawyer, whose professional motto was quickly recognized amongst many tribes as "If Uchuk can't beat 'em, eat 'em!"
They needed to invent the lawyers first ! :D